President

Somerset County GOP Chairman Dale Florio

SOMERSET – Field general Dale Florio goes over the numbers again in Somerset County Republican Party headquarters.  He doesn’t appear overly confident but he believes his party can comfortably fend off the other side, which is making a big play here in a presidential year when their national ticket has a double digit lead in New Jersey.

In the next room, three volunteers work the phones as pedestrians blow in from Main Street and pick up handfuls of “McCain-Palin” lawn signs.

“I’ve been pleased with the energy level – that energy surge close to Election Day,” says Florio, Republican Party county chair, looking up from his desk. “You’d have figured with the war, the economy and the last eight years that we’d have less excitement, but McCain is his own man. Quite frankly, with the Obama campaign’s focus elsewhere, it’s taken the Democrats’ focus away from New Jersey.”

JERSEY CITY – Although the pro-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Il.) crowd in the student center of New Jersey City University was juked with polls showing their candidate in possession of a double digit lead in Jersey, they supplied no demonstration of shock and awe support three days before Election Day.

Waiting for keynoters New York Gov. David Paterson and Gov. Jon Corzine, local politicians warmed up the proudly attentive audience.

“If you don’t stand for this man (Obama), you don’t stand for anything,” state Sen. Sandra Cunningham (D-Hudson) cried. “Get up. Get up!”

The crowd jolted to its feet.

JERSEY CITY – He stood with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Il.) before anyone else in the New Jersey Congressional delegation, and for that a crowd of Obama backers gave him his props here today when U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman (D-Fairlawn) climbed onto the stage.

“Not only will an Obama presidency change the world,” Rothman argued. “It will change the way Americans see each other.”

The congressman soaked up the cheers.

He won’t be here with his fellow New Jerseyans come Tuesday night.

JERSEY CITY – In spite of McCain campaign robocalls hyping a William Ayres domestic terrorism connection, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-Hoboken) predicted that his colleague, Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-Il.), will secure Florida’s 27 electoral votes on Election Day.

At Obama’s request, Menendez spent Thursday and Friday campaigning in the Sunshine State, reaching out to Cuban Americans in the Miami-Dade area.

“As I campaigned I encountered people who would privately show me an Obama sticker in the palms of their hands and tell me they intend to vote for Obama, but can’t say it out loud because of peer pressure,” Menendez told PolitickerNJ.com as he stumped today for Obama in Jersey City.

Paterson in Jersey City

JERSEY CITY – At an Obama rally here in the student center of New Jersey State University, New York Gov. David Paterson took aim at Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) repeated denunciation of Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) economic policy.

McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, refer in their down-the-stretch stump speeches to remarks made by a campaign supporter who told Obama that the Democratic nominee’s tax cuts sound like socialism.

Paterson put that on McCain’s home turf.

A poll released yesterday shows Barack Obama leading John McCain by 10 points in New Jersey -- five points closer than the same pollster previously found.

The SurveyUSA poll of 800 New Jerseyans, released yesterday, puts Obama at 52% to McCain’s 42%. That’s identical to a SurveyUSA poll from a month ago, but less of a gap than one released two weeks ago.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden are likely to carry New Jersey, according to the most recent independent poll

Yet another poll gives Barack Obama a huge lead over John McCain in New Jersey.

In a Fairleigh Dickinson University Public Mind poll released today, Obama leads McCain by eighteen points – 53% to 35%.  That’s five points higher than the last FDU poll, in which Obama led by 13%. 

The survey shows 80% of voters under 30 planning to cast their ballots for Obama, along with 85% of former Hillary Clinton supporters. 

“From the beginning, the McCain campaign hoped to use disgruntled Clinton supporters to their advantage. If McCain’s strategy in picking Governor Palin for his running mate was to win over former Clinton supporters, Garden State women are clearly not impressed,” said pollster Dan Cassino.

Wall Township Mayor John Devlin would just as soon not have to brave the wildcard impact of a national race.

A Democrat in a Republican town – the first Democratic mayor, in fact, in town history, he says voters know him locally as a nonpartisan elected official.

Although he prefers to run in non-presidential election years, his record is 1-1.

“I won when I ran in 2000, the year Bush beat Gore,” says the mayor. “Then I lost in the 2004 election, when Bush beat Kerry. That was a large turnout election. The Republican community came out in droves."

Editorial writers from newspaper across New Jersey agree that Barack Obama should be the next president.

Newspapers vary on most other endorsements, however.

Below is a list of federal endorsements made by New Jersey papers and the two major out-of-state publications that cover New Jersey.

In Monmouth County, every town comes intriguingly into play on some level, several more critically than others.

Republicans have owned the Freeholder Board for over 20 years, but in the last two elections Democrats picked up two seats to bring them to within one of county control.

A profusion of newly registered Democratic voters have boosted the party’s confidence heading into Nov. 4th, and now Democrats Amy Mallet and Glenn Mason are ready for that 11th hour jolt of cash from the Democratic State Committee.

State Party Chairman Joseph Cryan wants to win here.

He wants it more than he would like to pick up additional warm bodies in the Assembly next year, where his party’s already built a comfortable majority.

A victory by either Mallet or Mason would make a Democratic Party statement.  But neither is a name candidate running against incumbent Freeholder Director Lillian Burry and auto dealer vice president John Curley, an intensely focused campaigner who served as a Red Bank Councilman and has close political connections to state Sen. Jennifer Beck (R-Monmouth).